Strategy: Hypervisor Alternatives: Putting the Squeeze on VMware

Jasmine McTigue08/01/11

In the recent past, VMware’s ESX hypervisor was the default choice for enterprise server virtualization. But while VMware still leads the market in features and capabilities, advances by Microsoft and Citrix have opened the virtualization market to more robust competition. Enterprises now have viable alternatives when it comes to virtualizing production systems.

Citrix and Microsoft now match VMware on core functions, including live migration, high availability, virtual networking, guest OS support and more. VMware still leads with advanced features such as storage migration, but Microsoft and Citrix are closing the gap—often for significantly less money. (S3080811)